


A Whole New World

by ssrhpurgatory



Series: Dear Listeners AU [3]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: (Also at Disney World), (At Disney World), (By Yelling), Angst, F/F, F/M, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Canon, Processing Traumatic Experiences, and even more angst, some vomiting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2020-10-25 12:51:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20724503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: Set in a particularly ridiculous AU that started as ridiculous comics on my art blog. (AKA, my terrible OC is reconstituted by the Dear Listeners from the bits of her that were fed into Eris and is sent back to Earth along with Alexander Hilbert to help the rest of the gang Deal With Goddard and also All That Decima.)Goddard's been dealt with, but now everyone has to Deal With Feelings instead. At Disney World. (As requested by sybilius.)Including delights such as:- Minkowski now has a wife as well as a husband and both Isabel and Dom are Extremely Uncomfortable about the situation.- Eiffel is accidentally really good at inserting himself into awkward situations, but fortunately Hera's along with him for the ride.- Hilbert does not want to go to Disney World but he's willing to go as long as Rosemary's there to make fun of it with him.- This was supposed to be silly but really it’s just a carrier for people dealing with difficult feelings.





	1. Chapter 1

Taking down Goddard Futuristics, or at least the idea of taking down Goddard Futuristics, had been a handy way for all three of them to distract themselves from how strange and awkward things had been between them since Renée and Isabel had returned to Earth and Dom had discovered that his wife wasn’t quite as dead as Goddard had reported.

But finally, there’d been some kind of resolution. Finally, they’d managed to oust most of the board, and the company was in the hands of… well, Isabel Lovelace wouldn’t exactly call them good people, but they were definitely less obviously evil than Marcus Cutter had been.

She’d be keeping an eye on them, of course. For all that Hilbert trusted that woman Rosemary, for all that Pryce seemed to have changed significantly since she’d undergone her complete mind wipe, for all that the strange archivist named Adriane seemed to actually have a strong moral compass that pointed away from genocide somewhere under her stoic exterior, they weren’t exactly nice women.

And any day now, Dom and Renée would be moving out of Pryce’s mansion and back to their own home in New York. They—or at least Renée—had invited her along, but Isabel was a little hesitant about moving in with a married couple who still hadn’t quite had the time to sit down and talk about things.

Especially since one of those things was her.

Of course, maybe it would work out just fine. After all, Dom had seemed to accept Isabel’s presence in his wife’s life without question. But the two of them still edged nervously around one another, like a pair of cats who had just met one another and were making sure they weren’t about to get a claw to the face. And if they were ever alone in a room together… god, the awkwardness was always thick enough to cut with a knife.

Finally, one morning, Isabel managed to corner the both of them in a breakfast nook.

“We need to talk.”

Renée and Dom exchanged a look, and then Renée sighed and put down her coffee cup.

“Yeah, we do,” Renee said.

Isabel looked straight at Dom. “You don’t like the relationship I’ve got with your wife, do you?”

Dom frowned. “It’s not that. I understand—you can’t go through the sort of things the two of you went through together without becoming close, without…” He trailed off, and frowned, and both Isabel and Renée waited for him to continue. He looked to Renée next. “I love you. I have ever since the first conversation we ever had, in that little café in Paris. And I don’t…” he trailed off again, his voice sounding choked. Renée reached over and rubbed his back gently as he dropped his face into his hands. Isabel couldn’t quite tell, but she thought he might have started crying.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” he continued in a low, broken voice. “I lost you once, and I don’t want to lose you again.”

Renée bit her lower lip and frowned. “Do you think Isabel is going to take me away from you?”

Dom let out a little laugh, and lifted his head, swiping tears off his cheeks. “I don’t know.”

“I’m not,” Isabel said. “I wouldn’t try. I just…”

“You’re important to me. Both of you. And I love you. Both of you.” Renée said in her forthright way. “So I want to make this work, if we can. But you have both got to tell me what you need.”

Isabel opened her mouth to answer, then shut it with a snap. She hadn’t quite thought about it, she was realizing suddenly.

Dom had a frown on his face as well, as if he was facing the same dilemma. All the same, he was the first to speak. “I think… I think I need to get to know Isabel better. I mean, we’ve been here for more than a year—” he waved his hand through the air, obviously indicating the mansion they’d all been holed up in while they tried to figure out what needed to be done about Goddard Futuristics, “—but the two of you have been, well…”

“Focused?” Asked Isabel.

“On the job,” added Renée.

“Yeah,” said Dom. “So maybe… I don’t know. Could we take a vacation together? Now… now that we’ve got time for it?”

Renée looked at Isabel, who nodded, and then she said, “Yeah. That would be nice.”

“Where to?” asked Isabel.

Renée got a look on her face suddenly that reminded Isabel of a small child. “Well, we’re still here in Florida. Have the two of you ever been to Disney World?”

Just then Eiffel poked his head into the breakfast nook. “Did you say something about Disney World? Are we going to Disney World?”

Isabel and Dom exchanged a look of exasperation as Renée said, with a slightly forced smile on her face, “Of course we’re going to Disney World!”__

“You have to help me, Selberg.”

“Have asked you to call me Alexander now,” he replied, picking a slide up from the rack next to him and frowning at it.

“It’s just, Renée can’t deny Doug anything these days. And we were going to have a vacation, just us, but now he’s coming along, and there’s no way we can do what we need to do if he’s tagging along. So I need you to come and distract him.”

“At Disney World.”

“Yes.”

Alexander set the slide aside and sighed, looking at Isabel over the top of his glasses. “Is that not a place for children?”

Isabel bristled a bit. “Hey, it’s nostalgic.”

“I am not going to go to Disney World in order to babysit Officer Eiffel,” Alexander said in an exasperated voice.

“Please. I’m begging you. I… I need this to work out. With Renée. And with Dom. I need it, Alexander.”

Alexander sighed again. “Perhaps Rosemary will come along and give me a hand.”

“Thank you,” Isabel said fervently.

“Disney World.”

“Yes.”

“You want me to drop everything and spend a week with you in Disney World. Helping you run interference on Doug Eiffel.”

Alexander gave Rosemary a wide-eyed, pleading look. “Yes.”

“I don’t have time for that and you know it,” Rosemary said irritably, setting aside the paperwork she’d been looking over.

“If I am left alone with Eiffel, one of us will murder the other,” Alexander said.

“Oh, nonsense. From what you tell me, the man’s significantly less irritating than he used to be.” Rosemary turned her attention back to the paperwork.

“He is still irritating. And you know very well that Pryce and Adriane can keep this place going for a week without you.” He reached across the desk and put his hand over hers. “We have been at work since we returned to Earth, suka moya. Perhaps it is time to play a little.”

“But at Disney World? Isn’t that for children?”

“That is what I said!”

“What do you mean, you haven’t seen any Disney movies since Alice in Wonderland?”

“I was born in 1935,” said Rosemary, an amused smile on her face. “Alice in Wonderland was the last one I was young enough to appreciate.”

“Nonsense.” Doug declared.

“Oh, just because you’ve been watching them with your daughter…”

Doug went quiet. He still hadn’t seen Anne in person, but her mother had let them set up weekly Skype dates where they watched movies together with subtitles, and a little bit at a time, he was rebuilding a relationship with his daughter.

Of course, it always seemed to remind him that he’d forgotten every other moment of her childhood.

“Sorry,” Rosemary said, in a careful voice. “I forgot that was still a sore spot.”

Doug cleared his throat. “It’s okay. Anyway, we’ve got a couple of days before we go, so I’m going to get you and the Doc over there caught up.”

Alexander, who had only partly been paying attention, looked up at that. “I beg pardon?”

“We’re getting indoctrinated into the cult of Disney, I believe,” said Rosemary.

“I just wish I could go,” Hera’s voice came from one of the speakers in the living room.

“Hm.” Rosemary got up from the couch and crossed to the door of the living room. “Hey, Miranda?”

“What?” The irritable voice of Miranda Pryce echoed down the hallway.

“You were working on mobile AI units before my instance of Eris was shipped out, right?”

“My notes say I never solved the cooling problem.” Miranda’s voice came closer, and she poked her head into the living room. “Why?”

“I want to go to Disney World,” Hera said.

“Oh. Hm.” Pryce considered for a moment. “So maybe not a physical presence… a digital relay?”

“Is the wifi signal good enough there, do you think?” Rosemary asked.

“No, but a satellite uplink would do it.”

“You mean I can go to Disney World?” Hera sounded delighted.

“Well, we can loop a bit of your consciousness into a mobile device that Doug can wear around the park, at least,” Pryce said.

“YESSSS.”

Doug looked a lot happier to know that he’d have Hera with him too, Rosemary thought. Some time between when he’d first intruded on Renée’s plans and now, he’d picked up some of the awkwardness and realized the sort of faux pas he’d made inviting himself along. But by the time he had realized that, the plans had been finalized, and he’d then realized that he was going to be stuck at a resort for a week with Alexander and Rosemary, both of whom were dubious to the extreme about the appeal of Disney World.

It would have been fine if Daniel Jacobi had still been around; after all, he and Doug got on well enough, and Daniel seemed like the sort of fellow who might actually enjoy Disney World. But the damn man had taken himself off to the Arizona desert the instant Goddard looked like it was well in hand, saying he needed a lot of wide open spaces to blow stuff up in for a bit.

Well. Rosemary had encountered Warren Kepler more than a few times over the years she had spent as an instance of Eris. She couldn’t blame Daniel for wanting some time alone to get his head straightened out, and she supposed blowing stuff up was as good a way as any for him to do that.

“So, now that we’ve got that little matter sorted out… want to join us for movie night, Miranda?”

Miranda rolled her eyes. “No, thank you. I’ve got little enough time to myself these days.”

Rosemary shrugged and turned back to Doug. “What’s first on the list?”

Doug grinned. “Well, I think you might like The Princess and the Frog…”

God help her, she did. And even Alexander, who had cuddled up against her side on the couch—after much sighing and complaining about being forced to watch a children’s movie, of course—did not seem entirely bored by it.

Isabel set the salad on the table, where Dom and Renée were already waiting, then sat herself down. The three of them had resolved to try and eat dinner every night together before the Disney trip, and while it had been awkward the past two nights and would probably continue to be awkward for a good while going forward, she thought it was probably less awkward than it would have been if they hadn’t had their little talk.

“So. Uh. How were your days?” Isabel asked as they started dishing up the food. Baked ziti wasn’t exactly fancy, but it was easy, and easy was what she’d needed for her first night cooking for them.

“Good,” Renée said. Both Isabel and Dom waited for her to elaborate, but instead she scooped salad onto her plate and started eating.

Dom cleared his throat. “I, uh, okay, I guess,” he said. “I’ve been working on setting up some trips for next year—the Times would be happy to have me back, especially after the exclusives I’ve been able to get on the shakeup at Goddard, but I’ll be happy to get back to being a foreign correspondent. Corporate reporting is not really my forte.”

“That’s… that’s good.” Isabel dished herself up some ziti and stared down at the steaming pile of pasta.

“How about you?” Dom asked.

Isabel shrugged. “I spent most of the day with Pryce. And… and the other two.” Pryce was still trying to figure out what, exactly, made the alien clones tick, and she’d been pulling Isabel and Alexander and Rosemary in for examinations and tests.

There was silence from the other third of the small round table they were sitting at, and Isabel shot a frowning look at Renée, who had worked her way through a pile of salad greens—without dressing—and had started in on a serving of the ziti. Renée still seemed off to Isabel somehow, and from the anxious glances Dom was shooting his wife, he’d noticed it too.

“Something you want to tell us?” Isabel asked.

Renée looked startled, and a little guilty. “What? No. Of course not.”

Dom reached out and put his hand over Renée’s, forcing her to lower her fork to the plate. “Kochana…”

Renée gave an awkward little shrug. “I was offered a job today. Assistant Director of Goddard’s space division.”

“Oh,” said Isabel and Dom together.

“I’m not going to take it, of course.”

“Why not?” Isabel asked.

Renée looked to Dom, her expression anguished. “I can’t do that to you again.”

Dom rubbed his thumb over the back of Renée’s hand. “You’d have to go back to space again if you took it?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Then why not take it?”

“What about New York?”

Dom shrugged. “We can sell our apartment. Get something down here.”

Renée looked taken aback. “I just… I thought you’d want to get as far away from Goddard Futuristics as possible. And what about your job?”

“I can do my job from anywhere these days,” Dom said with a smile. “And I do, remember? I’m a foreign correspondent.”

Isabel sat, frozen, feeling locked out of the conversation, as always happened every time Dom and Renée fell into their roles of husband and wife.

God, please let this vacation help, she found herself thinking.


	2. Chapter 2

Rosemary had insisted that they turn the vacation planning over to her the instant that she had been roped into this Disney trip, and Isabel, at least, had been feeling rather apprehensive about it since. She’d interrogated the woman about travel plans the day before they were due to leave, when Rosemary still hadn’t bothered telling them anything—”Limos direct from here, darling girl, and don’t you worry, we’ll make sure Doug’s in ours,” Rosemary had said—but she’d been remarkably reticent about the remaining details of the trip.

Finally, the day came, and Rosemary gathered them in the kitchen the morning of. “Right. I’ve got wristbands here for everyone—full meal plan, plus a few extras, because some of those dining opportunities take more than one. Also snacks, park-hopper passes, and a little bit of spending money for everyone.” Rosemary named a per-person sum that left most of them gaping. Alexander, Isabel noticed, did not seem surprised at all; instead he was looking at Rosemary with an amused, fond expression on his face.

“Now, it’s not exactly off-season and this was planned in a hurry, so I couldn’t get reservations at any of the really exclusive dining locations, but if it turns out there’s some place you really want to go, let me know and I’ll see what I can do,” Rosemary continued. “And I did manage to get three bungalows in the Polynesian resort for the duration of the stay, so we’ll all have plenty of private space.”

“Who… who’s paying for this?” Renée stammered, still wide-eyed with shock.

Rosemary shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I am. If I’ve got to spend a week in a theme park, I’m going to live it up. And there’s no point in doing that if I can’t bring the rest of you with me.”

That was a surprise to Isabel. She’d expected the woman to say Goddard was footing the bill.

“Right. I hope everyone’s packed, because the limos are waiting!” And then, there was a scramble for bags while Pryce did some last-minute checks on the device, only a little larger than a smartphone, that she’d put together over the past couple of days for Doug to wear in order to ferry Hera around the park.

As promised, Rosemary herded Doug efficiently into the limo she and Alexander were sharing, leaving Isabel alone with Renée and Dom. Despite the fact that they’d been eating dinner together all week, they hadn’t spent much time together outside of their dinners, and the thought of spending an hour in the car with them had twisted Isabel’s stomach into knots, so much so that she almost considered diving for the door of the other limo before it closed.

“Good lord,” Renée said, sliding into the limo.

Dom followed her, settling in to a seat next to his wife, and Isabel gave in to inertia and slid in after him. She tried to sit across from them until Renée glared at her and patted the seat on her other side.

Isabel had to agree with Renée’s exclamation as she glanced around; the interior of the limo was black leather and plush red carpet and almost entirely unlike the interior of the last limo Isabel had been in, half her life ago, when she’d ridden in one on her way to prom. And the ride was entirely unlike that limo, too; she could barely tell they were in motion. From the cameras mounted on top, she suspected this was one of the many AI-driven vehicles Goddard had in their fleet; maybe they were better drivers than a human would be. Or maybe the limo just had really good suspension.

“Is that a mini-fridge?” Dom asked, breaking the silence that had reigned since they’d embarked.

“I think so.” Isabel slid off the seat and made her hunched way to the other end of the limo, which was entirely too large for three people. She opened the door, revealing a stockpile of just about every soda she could care to name, plus cans of… was that champagne? She picked one up and frowned at it.

“I didn’t know you could get that outside of Germany,” Dom said with a laugh, joining her at the fridge. “It’s awful stuff.”

“And you love it,” Renée said from behind him, amusement clear in her voice.

Together, the three of them searched the rest of the limo, uncovering a wine cooler, a cabinet of snacks, another cabinet of the sort of alcohol that was better at room-temperature, a third that revealed an entertainment system. To Isabel’s amusement, most of the movies that were available were westerns. She exchanged a look with Renée.

“Do you think?”

“This has to be Cutter’s limo,” Renée said through barely suppressed laughter. “Oh, god.”

“I think I must be missing something,” Dom said.

“Oh, god, have we really not told you Cutter stories?”

“You remember them better than I do,” Renée said. “After all, I had a restraining bolt on most of the time he was there. And he was fascinated by you.”

“A little too much,” Isabel said, making a face.

Dom was still looking confused, so, for the rest of the ride, Isabel and Renée entertained—and horrified—Dom with stories of Goddard’s former head honcho.

Doug sat across from the Doc and Rosemary, twiddling his thumbs and feeling awkward as hell. The pair of them had cuddled up together as soon as they’d gotten into the limo, and he felt just about as out of place here as he would have in the other limo.

“So. Uh. Still not sure you’ll like Disney?” he asked.

Rosemary raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you will? You’ve never been, after all.”

“I went once. Before.” With his daughter when she was very young, he’d discovered, looking over the file Goddard had on him.

The interior of the limo went silent again, and then Hera spoke up. “I don’t know about you lot, but I’m excited.”

The Doc frowned. “But… you cannot interact with things, you cannot eat…”

“I can make Doug take me on all the rides. And I want to meet the princesses,” Hera said, sounding just a bit plaintive.

“Sure thing, darlin’.” Doug said automatically, his mind still on a past he couldn’t remember.

“I, uh, have a bit of a confession to make,” Rosemary said. “And it was going to be a surprise, but I think that, well, maybe it’s best if I don’t spring this on you right before it happens.”

“Oh?” Doug was only halfway paying attention still.

“Anne and her mother will be there tomorrow.”

That definitely got his attention. “What?”

“I got them a suite in the main part of the resort we’ll be staying in, and the same package everyone else has.”

“Do… do they know I’ll be there?”

“Kate does. I don’t know if she told Anne.”

Doug gaped at her. “I… how? Why?”

Rosemary gave an awkward little shrug. “You just… seemed a little down. The other night. And Kate works for a subsidiary of Goddard, so it wasn’t too hard to pull some strings and get her some extra paid time off, and what single mother is going to turn down an all-expenses-paid trip to Disney for her and her kid?”

“I see.” Doug didn’t know how to react. “I… if you don’t mind, I’d like to listen to some music.”

“Of course. Anything you’d like.”

“I mean…” Doug indicated the headphones that he wore all the time nowadays. Music helped, when the lack of a past got too overwhelming, and right now he needed it.

Rosemary nodded, and Doug put the headphones on and shut his eyes, blocking out the rest of the world.

“Damn.” Rosemary sighed and slumped back in her seat. “I thought… I thought that would be a good idea.”

“How could it be a good idea?” Hera said acerbically, sounding almost like Pryce for a moment. “It’s hard enough for him, seeing her over Skype, not remembering a thing about her. And you decided to just… just spring his daughter on him like that?”

Alexander studied Rosemary, frowning. “This is not about Eiffel, is it?”

“I’m sorry?” Rosemary shot a glare at him.

“This is about your family.”

“Nonsense.”

“Your…?” Hera sounded confused, then, an instant later, “Oh. I see.”

“Did you just read my file?” Rosemary asked irritably.

“Nooooo. Of course not.”

“You read my damn file.”

“I would never.”

“In any case,” Rosemary said, visibly wrestling her irritation under control, “No, this is not about my family. Because I don’t have one of those, remember?”

Alexander shrugged. “Only other option is that you have suddenly decided to be fairy godmother,” he said, shooting an evil little grin Rosemary’s direction.

“You take that back!”

The last time Renée had been at Disney, she’d been twelve. She and her parents had stayed at a hotel well off-site, had driven in each day of their three-day visit in a rental car with barely functioning air conditioning, had blitzed their way through the parks.

This was an entirely different experience.

They were greeted by staff with leis, ushered through the main resort out to the bungalows alongside the lake. Before leaving the limos, she’d turned back for her luggage, only to find that staff already had it in hand.

There was something just a little bit decadent about it.

And the bungalows were decadent too. Any one of them would have been sufficient, if crowded, housing for all six of them—well, seven if you counted Hera, but her digital link wasn’t any bigger than a large cell-phone—but three! Good lord. They could all easily avoid seeing one another the entire week, if they wanted.

Not that she wanted that. She would almost have rather been jammed in with the other five, all in one of these bungalows. It would have made it easy to claim one of the rooms with a bed and a pull-out for her and Dom and Isabel, and then they wouldn’t be able to avoid each other, wouldn’t be able to put off facing this awkwardness that was still strung so tight between them.

It had relaxed for a little while in the car, as they’d shit-talked Cutter, but as the ride had gone on, Renée had noticed Dom getting stiff, anxious, worried. His gaze had flitted between her and Isabel each time the two of them had touched, taking in the little unconscious expressions of affection that Renée, at least, had become dreadfully conscious of since her husband had started noticing them.

They were important to her, those touches. They said, “I’m here. I remember. I’m with you.”

And as much as she loved Dom… well, Renée wasn’t the same person who had left all those years ago for Wolf 359, and she never would be again.

At least the three of them were staying in the same bungalow. Isabel had glanced suggestively at the one Doug had taken command of and then at Renée, but Renée shook her head at that. No. They would stay together, and they would make this work.

The three of them drifted into the living room of the bungalow after unpacking.

“So,” said Dom.

“So,” echoed Isabel. The pair of them were looking anywhere but at each other.

Renée gritted her teeth. This was going to be harder than she thought. Well. Maybe if they started off with everyone else… “Should we go see what the others are planning to do for lunch?”

Dom and Isabel agreed with an alacrity that was disheartening.

Doug—with Hera in tow—had already joined Alexander and Rosemary in their bungalow, Renée discovered when she knocked. It was a little strange, how he’d latched on to the pair of them, Alexander in particular; without hundreds of hours of science fiction clogging up his brain and making him suspicious of the scientist’s Russian accent and distractible personality, Renée thought that Doug quite liked Alexander.

Alexander, on the other hand, still seemed quite dubious about Doug. Well, he remembered Doug as he had been, while Doug… Doug only had his recordings to go from, and the Alexander Hilbert in those recordings was a completely different beast than the one who had come back to Earth.

This was an Alexander Hilbert with his hard edges rubbed smooth, an Alexander Hilbert who could smile and laugh, even if his face settled into a grim mask most of the time, even if he got sidetracked by a research question halfway through a conversation and immediately pulled out a notebook to scribble in.

“Come on in!” Rosemary called down the hall of the bungalow to the open door. “We were just trying to decide where to have lunch. I think the Magic Kingdom, because it’s close—”

“No!” Renée and Isabel said together as they entered the living room.

“Epcot’s a better place to start,” added Dom, coming in behind them.

“You want to see the Magic Kingdom in the dark the first time,” Renée explained. “So that you really feel the magic.”

Alexander rolled his eyes, and Rosemary followed that with an amused-sounding “If you say so…”

Just then, Renée noticed that Doug had his headphones on and his eyes closed. Damn. Something must have set him off. “Should we get going, then?”

“Aye-aye, Commander,” Isabel said, a little sarcastically, crossing the room to tap Doug on the shoulder. “Hey. Lunch?”

He opened his eyes and nodded.

“Ohhh…”

Alexander looked down at Rosemary, who was staring at the geodesic sphere that marked the entrance to Epcot with an expression of longing on her face. “Hm?”

“It reminds me of that geodesic dome that used to be on Goddard’s campus. Remember, next to the building they used to do space training in?”

They’d taken it down in 1996, when Cutter, then going by the name of Mr. Kerr, had consolidated Goddard’s holdings onto a single campus, necessitating massive amounts of construction. Rosemary had told him once that it was one of her favorite buildings on campus.

“You can go inside,” Dom said, dropping back to walk with them. “There’s a ride.”

“Might as well check and see if there’s much of a line,” Renée added over her shoulder. She’d looped an arm over Doug’s shoulders and was herding him along. “It’s a little early for lunch still.”

Rosemary bit her lower lip and did an excited little jig. “All right. Who’s with me?”

Somehow, Alexander found himself dragged along with everyone else, despite having no interest whatsoever in finding out what the ride meant by “Spaceship Earth.”

But at least he’d be side-by-side with Rosemary.

The line for Spaceship Earth had been remarkably short, but when the reached the end of it, they were faced with a small dilemma. “It’s fine. I’ll ride with Doug,” Isabel said, eyeing the carts that they were loading people into.

Renée shook her head. “No. I will. You and Dom go, all right?”

Given the look on Dom’s face, it wasn’t quite all right with either of them, but Isabel nodded and joined him in line. Renée was still the commander, even now. It was almost funny, how quickly they hopped to follow her commands.

Fortunately, Isabel didn’t have to try and make conversation with Dom. First of all, there was the ride… but, perhaps more amusingly, there was a continuous muttered conversation from Rosemary and Alexander in the cart in front of theirs. They both sounded incredibly dubious about the ride’s presentation on communication methods, especially as they got closer and closer to the end.

“That is not how pulse-beacon relays work!” Alexander yelled at one of the displays close to the end.

Isabel found herself exchanging an amused look with Dom, and clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the hysterical laughter that wanted to burst out of her when, seconds later, from the cart behind them, she heard Hera and Doug protest the same thing in unison.

“Oh. They want us to design our life together,” Dom said as the carts made their winding way back down the structure. He was frowning down at the touch screen that was attached to the cart.

“Let’s pick all the really ridiculous options,” Isabel said, bending over the screen. Her head bumped against Dom’s and they both jumped back in their seats as if they’d been burned.

“Er. Yes. Let’s.”

They bent over the screen, more cautiously this time, and worked their way through the dialog provided.

“I’ll have to take Anne on this with me tomorrow, if Kate’s okay with me taking her alone.” Eiffel was saying in the reception room at the end, as they watched the little videos their choices had created. “I bet she’d get a kick out of this.”

Ah. That probably explained the mood Eiffel had been in when they’d joined the others in Alexander and Rosemary’s bungalow.

To that end, it probably explained why Hera had been unexpectedly silent as well. Isabel thought the AI was jealous of the time Eiffel spent with his daughter, and Hera definitely wound up a just a little bit sulky every time Eiffel exchanged more than a few short words with his daughter’s mother.

Dom was at a console halfway across the room, watching the video of him and Isabel with a very peculiar expression on his face. An expression that was probably mirrored on Isabel’s face when Renée crossed the room and wrapped her arm around her husband’s waist, leaning her head against his, as she’d so often done with Isabel.

“…good?” was all Isabel could hear of the murmured question Renée asked Dom. Dom nodded and relaxed a little.

Isabel took a deep breath, and then approached the pair, coming around on Renée’s other side. Renée beamed down at her and wrapped her other arm around Isabel’s shoulders, and, with an anxious look at Dom, Isabel sank against Renée’s side. Dom’s shoulders went stiff again for a moment, but as they all watched the rest of the video together, slowly, a bit at a time, the tension between them relaxed again, for a long, quiet moment that felt like hope to Isabel.


	3. Chapter 3

Isabel tried to cling to that feeling of hope, but as the day wore on, it became harder and harder.

There were too many people. She realized suddenly that she’d avoided large crowds since she had returned to Earth; now, being in the middle of a Disney crowd on a day that was almost but not quite off-season was almost too much to bear. Every time a stranger accidentally brushed against her, her skin started to crawl; by the time they got to the point of picking a spot for lunch, she was starting to anticipate attacks from every quarter.

Of course, her rational brain knew that no one was going to attack her at Disney World, but her rational brain had no chance against the paranoia the Dear Listeners had brought Isabel Lovelace back into the universe with.

Renée was the first to notice, followed by Hera and Doug, and they—along with a very confused Dom—formed a protective barrier around Isabel, keeping the crowds at bay. Selberg, damn the man, didn’t seem to notice a thing.

No, Alexander, she was supposed to call him Alexander now. But it was hard to feel anything but anger when he was so damn wrapped up in that woman Epps that he didn’t notice what was happening to Isabel, hard to feel anything but resentment when he had come back sane and soft and normal. Hard to respect the man’s requests when he didn’t have the damn consideration to be as torn up as she was about not being the same person who had gone to Wolf 359.

The same person who had died at Wolf 359.

After lunch, Isabel tried to stand up from the dark corner table they'd found for her… and realized she couldn't. Not yet. Renée frowned and reached for Isabel, but God, even that little solicitous gesture was too much. Isabel jerked away from Renée’s reaching hand and tried to ignore the hurt look on Renée’s face.

“We can take you back to the rooms,” Renée said quietly.

“I'm fine.” Isabel winced. Her response had been both louder and more harsh than she’d meant it to be. She took a deep breath and tried again. “I’m fine. I just… need to sit here for a bit. Alone. Where no one can touch me.”

“All right. We’ll wait outside.”

“No. Just… just go.” Renée’s concern was too much for Isabel to bear. “I can text you later to find out where to meet you.”

“I don't like leaving you alone like this.”

“Please.”

Renée bit her lower lip, then nodded. “All right. But I'm going to come back and check on you in half an hour if you don't text before then.”

“Fine.”

Renée gave her one more long, worried look, and then headed towards the door of the restaurant and shooed everyone else out ahead of her.

Finally, Isabel was alone. She put her head down on the table and tried to let the noise of the restaurant wash over her, tried to unclench the muscles of her jaw, tried to release the paranoia that had her in its grip. She didn't know how long she had been sitting there when she heard the scrape of the chair across from her.

“This table is occupied,” she growled. “Go find your own.”

“Was my table too,” came the Russian-accented response.

Isabel lifted her head from the table and glared at Selberg. “Go away.”

He raised one nonexistent eyebrow at her. “No.”

“I swear to god, I will punch you.”

Selberg shrugged. “Hazard of occupation.”

“What do you want?” The last word came out on a sort of low sob that Isabel hated herself for.

“To no longer be in crowd.”

Isabel frowned and studied Selberg carefully. There, the tight line of his jaw. There, the tension of a forehead that wanted to draw itself into a frown. There, a tight twitch as someone passed by close behind his chair.

Oh.

“Come,” he said, jerking his head to one side. “I told Minkowski I would get you back to rooms.”

“I'm fine.”

“You are not. Neither am I. None of us are.”

“Yeah, well, the rest of them seem to be enjoying this just fine.”

“They are not what we are.”

“That woman—”

“Rosemary is not what we are. Her trauma is…” Selberg seemed to be searching for a word, and then shrugged. “Different. She is different.” He pushed back his chair and stood. “Now come. Do not make a liar of me again, and let us both get out of this crowd.”

Isabel frowned, but followed him. “What does that mean, make a liar of you again?”

Selberg chuckled. “Bad joke, that is all. Thinking of when you first returned.”

“To be fair, you weren't lying. I did die at Wolf 359.”

“So did I. And now, we are both here.”

The crowds thickened as they approached the monorail, and Selberg went silent. Isabel followed his cue. They didn't speak again until they were outside of the bungalows.

“You will be all right from here?”

Isabel nodded, and then grabbed him by the arm when he turned towards the door of his own bungalow. “Come on. Let’s talk.”

Selberg frowned, but followed her inside, to the little living room. “Have been under impression that you do not wish to talk with me.”

“Yeah, well, you're never more than three feet from Tweedledee at all times, so forgive me if I don't want to have a stranger joining in on our conversations.” Isabel flopped sideways on one of the cushy chairs in the living room and glared at Selberg until he perched himself cautiously on a corner of the couch that was across from the chairs.

“You have been living in same house as Rosemary for more than year and you still consider her a stranger.” It wasn't a question, but a wry statement of fact.

“Yeah, well.” Isabel shrugged. “She doesn't ever… it’s just hard to get a read on her, okay? It's like… it’s like she’s just pretending to be human.”

“Well, she is.”

“And what’s that even supposed to mean?”

“Remember how you met her, Captain.”

“Yeah, yeah, she showed up out of the blue with you. But what does that have to do with it?”

Selberg shook his head. “No. Remember how you first met her.”

Lovelace frowned and wracked her brain. “Oh. Eris. But I thought…”

“You thought all that came back were the pieces of Eris that had once belonged to Rosemary. And that would be incorrect.”

“What’s that supposed to even mean?”

“She is… collective personality. Rosemary’s mind is not only one Eris contained. She is better part of it, but…”

Isabel sat up suddenly, staring wide-eyed at Selberg. “Please tell me you're not implying what I think you are.”

“She was very like Cutter, even before. Now… she has part of Cutter inside her.”

Isabel swore, loudly and inventively, for a good minute. Selberg simply watched with a mild expression on his face. “Why are you just telling me this now? And why the FUCK is she out here and not in a fucking box? What the hell, Selberg?”

“Rosemary is one in control. But…” Selberg shrugged. “What do you think would have happened, if Goddard Futuristics were allowed to fall into wrong hands?”

Isabel bit her lip and stared at the ceiling. She hated to admit it, but Selberg was right about one thing. From what she’d learned since they’d started their brute-force corporate takeover of Goddard, the company had a hand in so many things that a sudden cessation of operations would have caused a major catastrophe, could have crashed the damn economy, could have stranded thousands of people in space. Now, Rosemary and Pryce were selling off small bits of the company, spinning off others into their own operations… but slowly, a bit at a time. Reducing the harm that Goddard could cause from the inside out.

It was a small miracle that Decima hadn’t gotten out, in the time between when they’d left Wolf 359 and when Selberg had finally neutralized the last batch from the caches Cutter had placed around the world, ready for release into the atmosphere. Things had been touch and go for a while, and they still weren’t certain that there weren’t other nasty little surprises like that waiting for them as they cleared out Goddard’s holdings.

“You know,” she said finally, breaking the thick silence of the room, “I thought she was your leash.”

“I beg pardon?”

“I thought, I don’t know, that they sent you back here to get rid of Decima, and that her job was to make sure that you didn’t go all mad scientist on us. Again. But it’s the other way around, isn’t it. She’s here for Goddard and your job’s to make sure she doesn’t go full Cutter.”

“The Dear Listeners did not make their intentions very clear to either of us, but... those two scenarios are not mutually exclusive.” Selberg looked down at his hands with a frown. “I… do not think it is likely, that I would have needed her to hold me back. They… I cannot think of who I was then without horror, you understand?” His expression was stricken. “To be so obsessed with idea of ending death that my work nearly caused…” He shuddered, and bent over, wrapping his arms around his middle. “Oh, blyad, Isabel, what I nearly caused.”

Isabel just watched him. Some small part of her wanted to give him comfort, but he didn’t deserve comfort after what he’d done… and she thought he knew that. After a moment he straightened up, removed his glasses, wiped his eyes.

“You done with your little pity party?”

Selberg let out a little snort of laughter. “Yes. Thank you.”

“I guess you probably want me to keep this whole thing about Rosemary having Cutter in her head quiet?”

He shook his head. “No. Tell the others, if you wish. They should know, if they have not already figured it out.”

“And you’re sure she’s in control.”

Selberg nodded. “Promise. She will never let that man dictate her life again.”

Something about the way Selberg said that had Isabel frowning. “What the hell did he do to her that has you so sure of that?”

“Not my story to tell.” Selberg sighed. “But… he made Goddard Futuristics home for her, a place that would never abandon her, a place where she was indispensable. And then…” Another sigh. “And then he asked her to give everything in exchange.”

“And she did?”

“And she did.”


	4. Chapter 4

“I want to go meet Princesses,” Hera demanded from the relay device strapped to Doug’s chest.

Doug pulled his attention away from Renée and her husband, who had been having a quiet argument for the past half hour, ever since the Doc had left them to go check on Isabel. Doug wasn't entirely certain what the argument was about, because it was being carried on in surreptitious whispers and passive-aggressive body language on the part of both participants—and really, no one could do passive aggressive like Renée Minkowski—but Doug thought it had something to do with Dom’s obvious relief when the Doc had volunteered to go look after Isabel, and the way he’d overridden Renée’s obvious desire to go do that herself.

“I’m pretty sure we'll be doing the rounds tomorrow with Anne and Kate. You mind waiting until then?”

That had been the wrong way to respond to Hera’s demand, Doug realized almost immediately.

She immediately fell into a sulky silence, though how he was able to tell the tone of the silence when Hera didn't have a face was a mystery to him.

“I suppose,” she broke the silence to say snippily, “That if we're not going to do anything fun, I might as well stop bothering with this relay for now and go see if Pryce needs any help around the house.”

The light on the front of the relay went dark. Doug sighed.

“Don't worry,” Rosemary said, appearing suddenly at Doug’s side. He suppressed the reflexive urge to jump; he didn’t think that Rosemary tried to sneak up on people, she was just so short that you didn't see her coming most of the time. And she'd disappeared when the Doc had wandered off to check on Isabel, so Doug had been expecting to play a very uncomfortable third wheel to Renée and Dom for the rest of the afternoon.

Rosemary reached out and tapped the side of the relay port. “She’s still there. She might have shoved the relay to a sub-process, but she’s still listening in.”

The relay remained stubbornly dark, and that was what reassured Doug even more than what Rosemary had said. If the silence managed to be stubborn, that meant Hera really was still there.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Those two still fighting?” Rosemary jerked her head subtly in the direction of Renée and Dom.

“Yup.”

“What do you say we go check out that appalling looking ride over there while they work through things?” Rosemary jerked her head towards the Norway exhibit, which had a sign advertising something called Frozen Ever After.

“You haven’t even watched Frozen,” he said with a laugh.

“I don’t need to have done that to know it looks appalling,” she said with a judgmental little sniff.

“Fine. Hera, you wanna go check out the Frozen ride with us?”

The relay remained silent, but the light on the front lit up. Doug smiled.

Renée and Dom had disappeared by the time they made it back to the walkway of the World Showcase. A quick text exchange revealed they’d headed back to the bungalows themselves.

Rosemary frowned. “You want to go back? I don’t mind.”

She’d taken his arm as they’d walked to the ride, and again as they’d made their way out of the gift shop, and as much as she had been pretending not to, Doug thought she had actually needed the support. “Let’s just sit for a bit and figure it out.”

When they found an empty bench, Rosemary lowered herself to it gingerly, in a way that definitely made him reconsider the way she’d been clinging to the Doc all morning. He’d thought it was just the way the two of them were, but add in the way she’d been hanging off his arm since the Doc had left, and it painted a whole different picture.

“Where’s your cane?” Doug had seen her use one around the house from time to time, though it always disappeared when there were too many people around.

Rosemary shot him an irritable look. “Now, what would I need a cane for? Hale and hearty specimen of alien-engineered humanity that I am.”

“You in pain?”

Rosemary sighed and shut her eyes, leaning back, obviously deciding it wasn’t worth her while to insist she wasn’t. “It’s not bad today. Just more walking than I’m used to doing.”

Doug sat silently next to her. He knew that she and Doc and Isabel had been spending a lot of time in Pryce’s lab these days, but the details were all very hush hush, and he hadn’t felt it was his place to ask awkward questions. Still… “I thought you guys were all, I dunno. Human but better, stronger, faster.”

“Mm.” Rosemary sat up and stretched, digging her fists into her lower back. “Maybe if they’re starting with a proper template. I’m… a little more of a collection of spare parts. Not one bit of me really original to the person I’m supposed to be.”

“How’s that work?”

“You’re forgetting that all they had of me was Box 953.” Rosemary shifted her torso to one side, wincing, and dug a fist into her hip next. “I’m not a person for the same reason that she isn’t,” she added, reaching up to tap the side of Hera’s relay port. The light on the front flashed and winked out, and Rosemary made a face at it before continuing. “Add in the fact that there wasn’t a scrap of anything resembling Rosemary’s DNA out in space where the Dear, Dear Listeners could get to it, and tah-dah!” Rosemary threw her hands up dramatically. “You get an approximation of a person, but not the real thing.”

Doug shook his head. “Yeah, but they recognized you.” He’d been there when she’d first walked into Goddard after getting back to Earth. The archivist, Adriane, had burst into tears and had swept her into a hug… and the half of the C-Suite that was made up of old white men who’d been there forever had all looked terrified.

“A really good approximation. But one that doesn’t quite fit together the way it should. And one that was meant for just one task, and that task’s about done.” She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. “Anyway, with luck, the fact that I’m only an approximation won't matter all that much longer.”

Doug frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You remember that shuttle full of music we sent out to Wolf 359?” Doug nodded, and Rosemary continued. “Well, I put a few extra items in there for the Dear Listeners, and I'm hoping they'll know what to do with them.”

A strange sense of foreboding came over Doug. He thought he knew the answer, but he asked the question anyway, because he would have wanted someone to ask him. “What did you send?”

“The brain scan that was taken before my—before Rosemary’s death. And her ashes.” She was staring into the distance now, a far-off, unfocused look.

“Wow. And here I thought I was the king of self-loathing.”

“I beg your pardon?” Rosemary turned back to him, shooting him an incredulous look.

“You sent an order to the aliens for a replacement you. That’s gotta put you at, like, complete rock-bottom on the self esteem scale.”

“I… wouldn’t exactly put it that way.” Rosemary looked down at her hands, which were clasped tightly together in her lap. “After all, I’m not really her.” She pasted a bright smile on her face. “Can't replace what doesn't exist.”

“You seem to be good enough for the people who care about her,” Doug insisted.

“Yeah, well, they don’t know what they’re talking about.” Rosemary’s laugh was sharp and bitter.

“You going to tell me that the Doc isn't head over heels for you? I thought you two were married. Or, y’know, planning to get hitched, when you had the time.”

“We thought it would be easier for you to accept him. If he was… different. If it was obvious that someone cared about him. Haven’t you heard about presenting a strong face?”

Doug nodded hesitantly.

“That was ours.” Rosemary’s voice was rough now. “But there’s nothing really there. I’m not her. I might have her memories, and some fragments of her personality, but that’s it, and he’ll figure it out soon enough. Once the real Rosemary gets here, if not sooner.”

“Bullshit.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I call bullshit. I don’t even have Doug Eiffel’s memories, but that doesn’t mean I’m not Doug Eiffel. So why the hell can’t you be Rosemary Epps, if everyone else agrees you are?”

“That’s different—”

“Bull. Shit.” Doug was suddenly furious. “Do you think I don’t know how hard it is, being around all these people who care about the person I was, pretending that I don’t notice every time they get all weird with me because I don’t react to something the way that the old Doug would have? But not once, not once have they ever implied I was anything but the real Doug Eiffel.”

Rosemary seemed like she was too startled to respond, so he continued.

“And it’s fucking hard, okay? Because all I’ve got to work from is a pile of audio logs, and that guy was an asshole. And you know what, they stuck by me! They’re helping me figure out who I am and who I was and who I want to be, and as far as I’m concerned, you have no goddamned excuse not to do the same.”

Eiffel took a deep breath, and slumped back on the bench himself, throwing his arm over his face.

“Wow,” came Hera’s voice from the box on his chest. “Sounds like you’ve been holding that in for a while.”

“Sorry you had to hear that, darling.” He lifted his arm from his face and glanced at the bench beside him… and as he’d suspected from the silence that had reigned since he’d covered his eyes, it was empty. “Do you mind if we head back to the bungalows? I need a break, and I probably ought to tell the Doc that I lost his girlfriend.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Hera said resignedly. “But you better take me to see princesses tomorrow, mister.”

“Will do.”


	5. Chapter 5

Isabel had settled on the couch next to Selberg after their little talk, shoving up against his side and letting her head drop against his shoulder, and in return he had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and leaned his cheek against her head.

The old Selberg had never been so comfortable with physical contact.

She didn’t think she would have been comfortable with it from anyone but him, not right now. Even Renée... it was too hard with her. She worried too much, whereas with Selberg... well, with Selberg, Isabel could be an asshole and he’d still understand, still hold that arm out for her when she leaned on him.

Somehow, they drifted off like that, Isabel shoved up against Selberg’s shoulder, her feet still in their socks wedged up in the opposite corner of the couch, Selberg half-leaning into her. It couldn’t have been for long—she didn’t feel any more rested when they both started awake at the sound of the bungalow door opening—but it felt... right. Like a missing piece had been slotted back into place. Maybe not for Isabel Lovelace as she had once been, but for Isabel Lovelace now, she needed this too.

Renée came into the living room and leaned over the back of the couch. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Feeling better?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” Renée leaned over further and pressed a kiss to Isabel’s forehead, and out of the corner of her eye, Isabel caught sight of Renée pressing her hand to Selberg’s shoulder, a firm, comforting sort of gesture, and he put his free hand up over hers for a moment, returning that touch.

_I’m here._

_I remember._

Selberg did not know how bad it had gotten, in the end. He had died before the worst of it.

But he had also spent more than twenty-five years working for Goddard Futuristics before she had met him, and she had finally started to wonder what damage had been done to him during those years.

Dom appeared at Renée’s side, wrapping his arm around her waist and leaning into her. “Sorry. I know you were worried...”

“It’s fine.” Renée tilted her head to the side to press a kiss to her husband’s cheek. “I think we tried to do too much at once.”

“Sorry for spoiling everyone’s fun,” Isabel said.

Renée shook her head. “No. You didn’t spoil anything.”

Isabel sighed and sat up. “Yeah, right.”

“No. I forgot how overwhelming this place is. I didn’t realize how much I’d be asking of you.”

“I still could have—“

“Isabel.” Selberg’s hand came down on her shoulder, and she let go of a tension she hadn’t realized she had been holding. “I could not. It is worse for you. Do not discount your own limits.”

“...fine,” she said grudgingly, after a moment where both Renée and Selberg just stared at her meaningfully.

There was a knock at the front door, and then it opened. “Hello? Is this where everyone is hiding?”

Dom half-turned towards the door. “Doug. Come on in.”

Doug joined Renée and Dom at the back of the couch. “Doc! I was looking for you.”

Selberg frowned, getting to his feet and peering towards the door. “Rosemary did not return with you?”

Doug looked guilty as he responded. “No. She ran off on me. I’m a little worried. She said some kind of weird stuff about not really being Rosemary...”

“She isn’t,” Isabel cut in. Everyone but Selberg looked curiously down at her, and her face heated. “I mean, she isn’t just Rosemary. I know you guys didn’t meet Eris, but... well, that’s what the Dear Listeners made her out of. The contents of Box 953. Which means she has Cutter in there too.”

Renée frowned, but neither she nor Eiffel seemed anywhere near as surprised as Isabel had been.

“You know, every time I think I’ve heard you guys say the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard, you manage to top it,” Dom said, deadpan.

Isabel started laughing first, but before long, they all were, relieving the tension that had been strangling them. Even Selberg let out a chuckle or two.

“You going to go look for her?” Isabel asked.

Selberg opened his mouth as if to speak and hesitated for a moment before closing it with a snap and shaking his head.

“She was having trouble walking,” Doug added. “Did she bring her cane?”

“She will manage,” Selberg said quietly. “I do not think my presence will help.”

“Dude, what the _fuck_.”

“Eiffel, please.”

“You literally could not keep your hands off of each other this morning. And now you’re just abandoning her out there?” Doug gesticulated wildly, barely missing Isabel’s head.

“It is not wild west. It is theme park. Full of people.”

“She _needs_ you.”

Selberg took two stumbling steps to one of the armchairs and sank into it, shutting his eyes and looking suddenly exhausted. “She does not.”

“But you need her,” Isabel said quietly, interrupting before Doug could speak again.

“I _want_ her. Is different,” Selberg muttered, sounding almost petulant.

“No. You need her,” Renée said quietly. “Like I need Dom and Isabel. You don’t look at someone like that if you don’t need them.”

“I do not need anyone,” came Selberg’s irritable response. “And I am returning to own room.” He sprang to his feet again, brushing past Renée’s reaching hand on his way towards the door.

“That... could have gone better,” Isabel commented as the door closed behind Selberg.

“Yeah, well, strap in, because I’m not done yelling,” Doug said. “Commander, you’re an asshole.”

Renée’s eyebrows flew up her forehead in surprise. “I’m sorry?”

“Look. I get it. You feel bad for me, or you feel responsible for me, or whatever the fuck else is going on in your commandery head, but guess what? You aren’t responsible for me, and you sure as hell don’t need to keep protecting my feelings.” Doug paused and took a deep breath, but Renée was obviously too shocked to respond. “And I’m grateful. I really am. To you, and Isabel, and...” he put his hand to the device on his chest, which blinked an acknowledgement from Hera. “But why the hell did you let me come along on this trip?”

“Doug...” Renée reached for him, but he took a step back.

“No. Look. I fucked up. I shouldn’t have jumped in the way I did. But you fucked up too! All you had to say was that you needed some time to figure things out as, you know, a unit, and I would have backed off. That’s all you had to say.” Doug let out a low, despairing laugh. “I mean, for god’s sake. It’s just Disney World.”

Renée’s jaw stiffened in the way it always did when she was trying not to cry. “Okay, so maybe I did mess up. But maybe... maybe I was afraid.” She looked at Dom. “When you suggested we take a vacation together, my first thought wasn’t some secluded beach or some place we could be alone together, just the three of us. It was here. Where there are people and rides and a hundred different distractions and maybe...” She sighed. “Maybe I wasn’t ready to see what we’d be without all of that.” She turned back to Doug. “And maybe you were an easy way to add one more layer of distraction, even if I wasn’t thinking that consciously.” She reached for Doug again, and this time he let her touch him, let her pull him into a hug. “I’m sorry, okay? I know you don’t need me to look after you.”

“Some of the time is okay,” Doug quipped, submitting to a hair-ruffling from Renée with equanimity.

“And I definitely would have thrown a fit if you’d come to Disney without me,” came Hera’s voice, muffled by the hug.

Doug laughed and stepped back from Renée. “Yeah, well. What do you say we go see a bit more of the park while we let this lot sort themselves out?”

“Could someone adjust the harness first? I had a terrible view on the rides.”

Between them, Renée and Isabel got the harness sitting high on Doug’s chest... and then he and Hera were gone, leaving Isabel alone in the bungalow with Renée and Dom and all the issues that still hung in the air between them, unresolved.


	6. Chapter 6

Daniel Jacobi ducked back behind the plant he’d been observing the others from the shelter of, trying not to look suspicious and definitely failing. Or at least the small child who had been watching him—and his freshly pink hair—with curiosity gave him a dubious look. Daniel stuck his tongue out at the kid and got a laugh in response. The woman who was holding the child’s hand shot Daniel a dirty look and shuffled her charge along, and he returned to what he’d been doing.

Doug was alone on the bench now, and after a brief exchange with what Daniel assumed was an AI relay for Hera, he got up and headed in the direction of Epcot’s entrance. Daniel hesitated, trying to decide whether or not to follow him… when the decision was made for him.

“Ah-hah!” A pair of fingers closed on his earlobe, pinching it hard and pulling him down face-to-face with the owner of said fingers. Rosemary raised her eyebrows at him. “Skulking around, boyo? I thought that was beneath you.”

“Ow.”

Rosemary snorted, but released his earlobe. “You going to run off?”

Daniel rubbed his ear. “You’re worse than my grandmother.”

“I’ll take that as a no. Which grandmother?”

“The Jewish one.”

“High praise. Why are you skulking when I offered you a place on this little trip?”

Daniel sighed. “Oh, I dunno. Maybe because Minkowski and I killed each others friends? Maybe because the guy I blew up is walking around when Alana isn’t? Maybe because, crazy thought, all of that makes everything awkward?”

“If you wanted to avoid things being awkward, you wouldn’t be here at all.” Rosemary frowned. “So?”

“I like the fireworks shows.”

“Uh-huh.”

Daniel fidgeted awkwardly. “And that’s it.”

“Daniel.”

“I was going to come say hi.”

“Were you?”

“Yeah. I was just… waiting for the right time.”

“And skulking while at it. How long have you been following us?”

Daniel shrugged. “Since Spaceship Earth?”

Rosemary glared. “No wonder Isabel and Alexander were so paranoid.” She reached up and smacked Daniel gently upside the head. “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that I’m a special agent and I’m trained in following people without detection!”

“Oh for the love of—they can tell you’re there! That’s how they’re made!” Rosemary let out an angry little huff of breath, still glaring.

“Wait, really?” He frowned down at Rosemary. “You too?”

“How do you think I noticed you, Mr. ‘I’m a special agent’? Of course me too.”

“That’s freaky.”

“So good of you to notice.” She gestured at his head. “What’s with the pink hair, anyway? Isn’t it detrimental to your goal of sneaking?”

“It’s protective camouflage.”

“Bright pink. As camouflage.”

Daniel shrugged awkwardly and shot Rosemary his best attempt at a charming smile. “Well, it distracts from my face, and technically I’m banned from Disney.”

Rosemary sighed. “What did you blow up?”

“Remember what I said about liking the fireworks?”

“_Daniel_.”

“We’re actually going to go yell at Hilbert, aren’t we,” Hera said after they shut the door to the bungalow, sounding remarkably gloomy.

“Huh? Nah. I’m all yelled out.” Doug sighed. “Though I should probably see if he’s got Rosemary’s cane, yeah? Just in case we run into her while we’re out and about.”

“Oh, probably,” Hera said bitterly.

“Don’t like her, darlin’?”

“I don’t like what she said about me.” Hera paused. “About me not being a real person.”

“I don’t think that was about you,” Doug said with another sigh. “Anyway, you’re a person to me.”

“Am I?”

“Sure.”

“Well that’s a ringing endorsement.”

“Maybe you’re not a normal person. But you’re definitely a real one.”

“Okay, fine. But I don’t like what she did to you, either,” Hera said irritably. “Springing your ex-wife and daughter on you like that? What was that?”

Doug paused outside the door to the Doc’s bungalow and leaned against the wall next to it instead of opening it. “You’re being a real brat, you know that?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Seeing Kate and Anne is important to me. Yeah, it was a shock to know they’re going to be here tomorrow, but I want to see them. I want them to see me. Now that I’m not, y’know, who I was. And _you_ are acting like a jealous girlfriend.”

Hera stayed silent at that.

“Hera?”

“It’s nothing. I…” There was a tinny little sigh from her. “I didn’t think about it that way. I guess I am jealous. Not because I—I mean, it would never work, because I don’t even have a body, I just…”

“Also you’re what, like seven years old? That’s a little bit young for me,” Doug said, trying to inject some humor into the situation.

“Right! Exactly. It wouldn’t work.”

They were both silent for a moment.

“Do you think the Dear Listeners would give me a body, if we sent me into Wolf 359?”

“Honestly, I have no idea. But if it didn’t work, I’d miss you.” Doug placed his hand protectively over the relay device. “You get it more than any of the others. Maybe because you were used to people just deleting chunks of your memory whenever they felt like it…”

“And then I did the same thing to you,” Hera said bitterly.

“Yeah, well, it needed to be done. And the way I was before… it’s kind of nice getting a fresh start, you know?”

“No.”

Doug sighed. “Anyway, let’s go raid Doc’s bungalow, huh?”

“Fine.”

“And you’ll help me keep an eye out for Rosemary?”

“I _suppose_ I could hack into the surveillance cams.”

“That’s my girl.”

Daniel meant to give Rosemary the slip, but somehow she compelled him to follow her further around the World Showcase. An hour later, he was sitting at an outdoor table with her, nursing his third margarita and deep in the weeds of an awkward conversation.

“Do you hate me for telling them to not bring him back?”

Daniel sighed and stared down at the glass of margarita in his hand as he thought about it. “Kepler? Not really. I mean, I... did I love him? I don’t even fucking know, you know? But he wasn’t... not with the way he used people. And had us looking up to him like some kind of infallible god.”

“You loved him, in your way,” Rosemary said, with a sly, sideways look.

“Like you’d know that.”

“How many instances of Eris did you play around in? Four?”

“Five. There was the one before they sent us out to...” To Wolf 359.

“Ah, the joy of being out of sync with my sisters, thanks to my untimely demise in the star.” Rosemary’s eyes twinkled, crinkling at the corners with her smile. “You loved him the only way he let anyone love him. And he loved you back the only way he could. Even being loved as a useful tool is love.”

Daniel snorted. “That’s not really enough.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t.” Rosemary turned her attention to the glass in her own hand, possibly contemplating some one-sided love of her own.

“Anyway, the one I really blame you for is Alana. If you brought Doctor Strangelove back with you...”

She raised an eyebrow pointedly at the Strangelove reference, but didn’t comment. “I’m not sure they had what they needed. You did bring her body back with you.”

“They must have had enough scans to make do. We were all out on the hull during the lead-up to the initial contact event. And they had plenty to replicate me.”

“I suppose I ought to ask you another question, then. Would she have wanted to come back?”

Daniel opened his mouth to respond and couldn’t. He took a deep slug of his margarita instead.

“The way I see it, the only thing really tying her to Earth was you. And if she could either make her way home or be out there, in the stars, among alien intelligences who needed a little help learning how to communicate...”

Daniel sighed and put his elbows on the table, slumping forward and burying his face in his hands. “All right, all right. No need to rub it in.”

He felt Rosemary place her hand on his arm. He glanced up at her.

“I genuinely don’t know,” she said, a little crease of concern between her eyebrows. “If it gives you closure to think she’s out there like that, you should believe it. It’s just as likely as any other outcome.”

“It shouldn’t help, but it does.”

“Well, good.”

Daniel laughed. “Still bending people to your will, I see.”

“Mm.” She took a sip of her margarita.

“You know, you never told me why you decided to come back like, well...” he gestured at her, at the close-cropped white hair, at the wrinkles on her face. “...this. Eris was always a young woman.”

“I like to think it’s what Rosemary would have looked like, if she had lived this long,” she said, contemplating her glass again. “And I suppose I wanted to match him.”

“Couldn’t they have made you both young?”

Rosemary snorted at that and immediately had to grab for the napkins on the table in order to mop up spilled margarita. “Oh, dear boy, neither he nor I were ever _young_. At least like this, the outsides match the insides.” And then she glanced up over his shoulder, and waved as her other hand came down hard on his arm, trapping it against the table. “Doug, darling! Come join us and get yourself a fancy drink.”

Daniel attempted to get up from the table, planning to melt into the crowd before Doug reached them, but Rosemary’s hand kept his arm pinned in a viselike grip, and he didn’t think he could gnaw either his arm or hers off before Doug arrived. So instead he pasted a smile on his face that wasn’t fake only because he was well on his way to drunk, and turned to face the guy he currently had a completely unwarranted crush on.

Doc had opened the door immediately at Doug’s knock and had handed over Rosemary’s cane. He had obviously been listening in to at least part of Doug’s conversation with Hera.

“You sure you don’t want to come with me?” Doug had asked.

There had been a moment of hesitance, and then Doc shook his head. “She will be fine. She...” And then he had sighed and disappeared back into the bungalow, closing the door in Doug’s face.

Doug had expected to spend the rest of the afternoon scouring the park for her, but in the end, Rosemary was surprisingly easy to find.

And surprisingly drunk.

And, surprisingly, in the company of Daniel Jacobi, who was sporting some surprisingly pink hair.

“Why do you Goddard people always get up to shenanigans when left to your own devices?”

Jacobi raised a finger indignantly. “I did not start the shenanigans! This was all her idea!”

Doug raised his eyebrows and handed the cane over to Rosemary, who took it with a little smile and hung it over the arm of her chair. “Right, so instead of yelling at you for getting a little old lady drunk, I ought to yell at her for corrupting a youth?”

“That’s me, a corrupting influence,” she rasped, leaning on the table.

Jacobi snorted. “Yeah, right, grandma. I was plenty corrupt before you came along.”

“You know, I think Hera and I are just going to leave you two to whatever this is—“ he gestured at the table and the empty margarita glasses, plus the two half-full ones—“while we go check out a few more of the rides.”

“Have fun, kids!” Jacobi said with a cheery wave.

“Yikes,” Hera commented in a low voice once they were far enough away that the chance of being overheard was small.

“Yeah, I know. But maybe he’s talking to her, at least?” Jacobi had been all business for the months they had spent plotting the downfall of Goddard, and for the months after that when Rosemary had arrived on Earth with the Doc in tow and a plan for the corporate takeover of the company. All business, working with Renée and the rest of them with a stony efficiency... and then, the instant things were more-or-less settled, disappearing into the Arizona desert to deal with his feelings in a way only Daniel Jacobi could possibly find soothing: by blowing stuff up.

“Honestly, you humans. I run a debugging cycle when things get too tangled.”

“What about Maxwell?”

Hera stayed silent for a few long minutes, long enough for Doug to purchase an obscenely large cinnamon roll from a vendor who gave the device strapped to his chest a weird look.

“I guess sometimes I need to talk too,” she said finally.

“Like I said. You’re a person.”

“Yeah, well... tell me how that tastes, would you?”

Doug took a bite of the cinnamon roll. “Like I won’t sleep from this sugar high,” he mumbled around his mouthful.

“Ugh, you biological beings are so gross.”

Doug smiled. “Love you too, Hera.”


	7. Chapter 7

“The problem is,” Daniel slurred, waving his glass through the air, obviously and thoroughly drunk, “The problem is, _I_,” he said with theatrical emphasis, “was a dick to him.”

Rosemary snatched the glass out of Daniel’s hand, and he blinked in confusion for a few moments before glaring at her.

“Hey!”

“Oh, no, Danny boy, I’m cutting you off.”

He looked as if he were about to argue for about 30 seconds, and then deflated back into his chair. “‘Kay.”

“Anyway, back on the Doug thing, didn’t he forget all of that?”

“Oh, no. I was even more of a dick on the trip back.”

“Oh, _Daniel_.”

“Look, what was I supposed to do, huh? Mincow... Minkow... Renée spent all her time glaring at me like she wanted me to stop existing, and, like, I _tried_, and I spent all my time glaring at her, I mean she fucking...” his voice dropped suddenly from a shout to a harsh whisper when Rosemary raised her eyebrows in warning. “She shot Maxwell. And yeah, fuck, I’m good at compartmentalization. But not... but not that good.” He slumped forward into his folded arms, propped up on the table.

“So you were a dick to everyone all over again.” Rosemary patted Daniel cautiously on the shoulder. “And now you’re inflicting this all on me instead of seeing a therapist like a normal person.”

Daniel turned his head to one side and gave her a mournful look. “A therapist wouldn’t understand Goddard.”

“Fair enough,” Rosemary responded glumly. “I wonder if Miranda could program an AI for it, once she’s back on track.”

“She did. You. Eris,” Daniel said in a muffled voice, burying his face in his arms once more.

Rosemary laughed, a little hysterically, and leaned back in her chair. “Well, aren’t we all just fucked.”

“Pretty much.” Daniel went silent, and after a few moments a whispery little snore began emanating from him.

“Wish you’d told me you were a dozy drunk before I got you sloshed,” Rosemary muttered at him.

The snoring continued.

She sighed and pulled out her phone.

“Do you want to leave?” After Doug left, Renée had pulled Isabel back down on the couch, taking her hands and holding them firmly for a few long, quiet minutes. Dom had disappeared into their bedroom, and Renée tried not to worry too much about what that meant. She’d go to him after she was done with Isabel. They would talk. She would make this work.

Isabel shook her head. “We’re here. And you’d want to come with me, and Dom would want to come with you, and I can’t...” She sighed, and tugged her hands out of Renée’s, wrapping them around her middle. “Let’s just stay. I’ll get used to it.”

Renée frowned. “And if you don’t?”

“Then I’ll eat a lot of room service,” Isabel said flippantly. “I had a look at the menu. It looks pretty good.”

“Isabel...”

Isabel’s expression softened, and she leaned into Renée this time when Renée reached for her. “I will be fine. Promise. Now go make sure your husband will be too.”

Renée winced. She had hoped that Isabel hadn’t noticed the way that Dom had left the room. “All right. But if that changes...”

“I’ll let you know. I promise.”

Renée tugged Isabel into another hug and got to her feet, making for the bedroom. She wiped her hands on the front of her jeans before trying the door, strangely nervous.

The knob turned in her hand, and the door opened, revealing Dom, who was busy unpacking into the drawers.

“Hey.”

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Hey. Figure we’ll be here long enough that we might as well move in.”

“Dom...”

He shook his head. “Look. I’m never going to understand what you went through out there. I mean, aliens? Real, proper aliens, and that’s not even the bit that has me the most incredulous, because Marcus Cutter was up to some real shady shit, you know?” He sighed and straightened up, resting his hands on the top of the dresser. “But they do understand. She does. And they’re your family now.”

“You’re my family too,” Renée said in a weak voice.

“I know. I know.” But Dom sounded defeated, and it left Renée’s heart aching. “I knew things would change when you went into space, I just didn’t expect them to change this much. And I know we’ve been trying, but I just... I sometimes wonder if there’s a point where we should stop.”

“I’ll pick you.” The words hurt to say, and they come out in a rush. “If that’s what you need me to do, I’ll pick you.”

Dom turned, looking startled. “It’s only been a week. I’m not saying I’m not willing to try, kochana. I just... I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life like this. If we can’t make it work...”

But it hadn’t been just a week, had it? “It’s been two years. It’s been two years, and you’re still feeling like an outsider to my life, and I don’t know how to fix that, and...”

“And we’ve only been trying for a week.” Dom crossed the room to her and took her in his arms, crushing her close, his head tucked against her shoulder where it fit so well. “I just... I don’t want this to still be us in another two years. Because I love you, and it’s hard to see you like this, and if I could just make myself feel different in an instant I would. But human brains don’t work that way.”

“I’d choose you,” Renée said again, her lips pressed against her husband’s temple.

“I’m not sure I’d want you to,” came his muffled response.

Renée pulled back to look down at Dom, startled. “What?”

He looked up at her with a little frown between his eyebrows. “I thought I knew what it meant when you said they were your crew, but it’s different seeing you with them out here. You’re their _commander_.” He let out a pained little chuckle. “Sometimes, before all of this... you just seemed lost, is all. But now you’ve found yourself, found something that really matters to you, and I... I’m still not sure whether there’s a place for me in it.”

“Dom...”

“I know. I know! But sometimes I wonder.”

Renée sighed and pulled her husband close again. “I wouldn’t have survived without them. But I’m not sure I would have survived without knowing I had you to protect, either.”

Dom smiled again, the curve of his lips warm against her throat. “You’re the most stubborn woman I know, Renée. You would have survived, if only to spite the universe.”

“Yeah, well.” The depth of love behind those words made Renée awkward and uncomfortable for just a moment. How could she ever choose between this and the new family she had made for herself?

They would all just have to make it work.

“I’ll help you finish the unpacking?”

“Sure,” Dom said, stepping back with a smile on his face. “And then we’ll see what the others are up to?”

“Sure.”

“I’d choose you.” The words rang in Isabel’s head, and she knew that was what she got for eavesdropping, but the habit of paranoia had her listening at doors anyway.

Those words were a good reminder to try and break that habit. Nothing good ever came from hearing the woman you loved more than anything say those words to someone else.

After all, it wasn’t like Isabel hadn’t already known those words were the truth.

She slipped silently out the front door. Better to face the crowds again instead of lingering in a place where she would be tempted to eavesdrop again.

Selberg was emerging from the bungalow he’d set up in, and he gave her a little wave and approached at haste. “Ah. Good. Isabel.”

“Why does it sound like you want me to do something?” Isabel fell in at his side as he gestured for her to follow.

“Daniel Jacobi is in park.”

“Oh, _god_.”

Selberg let out a crack of laughter. “Do not worry, he has not yet blown anything up. And according to Rosemary, he is currently too drunk to stand, let alone play with high explosives. But she could use a hand moving him to somewhere less… exposed.”

“Well, he can’t move in with us. Renée would probably kill him within an hour.”

Selberg shot her a sly, amused look. “I would bet on fifteen minutes. The man is _very_ annoying.”

Isabel laughed herself. “Good to know that being back on Earth hasn’t made our lives any more normal, huh?”

Selberg went still and silent at that. Oh, his forward walk only stuttered for a step, but there was a certain stiffness in his jaw, a certain set to his eyebrows that she could see from a sidelong glance at him.

“Selberg?”

“I do not think I have ever had normal life to compare this to.” He shrugged. “All I can remember of my childhood is illness and death around me. And then… I was exceptional, you understand?” The words weren't said in the tone of a brag, but a statement of fact. “I made other people angry by existing, by understanding things that were difficult for others so easily. And then… it was just easier to accept the anger. And now I am very good at making people angry.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“It is, is it not?” Another crack of laughter from Selberg, this one harsh, rasping out from his throat. “I no longer wish to make people angry, but I do not know how to make them anything else.”

Isabel’s throat felt tight as well. “I’m not sure I’m any better off there than you are,” she rasped back. One thing to say for this conversation; it was awkward enough that it had distracted her completely from being paranoid. The two of them had boarded the monorail while they’d been chatting and Isabel had forgotten completely to assess every single other passenger for potential danger.

They sat quietly, each nursing their own wounds, Isabel thought. And they did not talk again until they rounded the boardwalk far enough to catch a distant glimpse of Rosemary’s bright dress and stark white hair from behind, where she was sitting at a little table covered in glasses. Someone with very pink hair was sitting at her side, their head down on the table.

Selberg came to a halt, and Isabel paused beside him.

“You were right,” he said. “You and Renée both. I need her.” He swallowed hard. “But it is frightening, to need someone when all you have ever done is make other people angry.”

Isabel didn’t know how to answer, and after a moment Selberg started walking again. He bent over Rosemary’s chair from behind and pressed a kiss to her cheek, plastering a little smile Isabel suspected must be fake to his face. “Well, suka, what trouble have you gotten yourself into this time?”

“Hey, now, this time I was keeping someone else _out_ of trouble,” she protested with a laugh as she swatted Selberg away. “Danny boy is nice and docile now.”

Isabel poked the person with pink hair, who, from close up, did in fact seem to be Daniel Jacobi. “Danny boy is dead drunk,” she said, raising an eyebrow at Rosemary.

“Well, he can’t blow anything up like that, at least,” Rosemary responded with a determined lift to her chin. And then she looked thoughtful for a moment. “Probably. He probably can’t blow anything up like that.”

“We will see to it that he is… contained,” Selberg said. Isabel wasn’t quite sure how they’d achieve this, but she nodded agreement.

“You’re both darlings,” Rosemary said, beaming up at them both. “And now, if you’ll excuse me…” She got to her feet, stumbled over to the nearest trash can, and upended the contents of her stomach into it.

Alexander grabbed a pile of mostly clean-looking napkins off the table and was at Rosemary's side in an instant, rubbing her back gently, trying to soothe her. He suspected he was only making her more irritable. She hated people fussing over her when she was ill. Hated admitting she was ill in the first place.

She accepted the wad of napkins he proffered and then waved him off. “Go deal with Daniel,” she said, before spitting into the trash can again. “I’ll be fine.”

“You are still having trouble keeping things down,” Alexander said, frowning. Margaritas were perhaps not what he would have prescribed, but they were mostly water and sugar. She should at least have been able to manage that.

Rosemary shuddered under his hand, and another rush of watery, brightly-colored vomit made its way into the trash can. She winced and dabbed at her nostrils. “Damn.”

Alexander glanced over his shoulder at Isabel, who nodded and began assessing Jacobi. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Isabel pulled Jacobi’s chair out from the table just far enough to be able to get her shoulder under his torso and then, as if he weighed next to nothing, she lifted him across her shoulders in a fireman’s carry and gave Alexander a thumb’s up before heading down the boardwalk with him.

“Suka?”

Rosemary lifted her head and glared at him. “Fine. No, I still can’t seem to keep anything down for long. You satisfied?”

Alexander shook his head. “No.” He put his hand to her forehead. She was the same temperature he was, a few degrees cooler than human norm. “There is nausea?”

She jerked her head away again. “Sometimes. Is you fussing over me going to make the fact that I’m dying any easier to bear?” Her voice was bitter, and so was the expression he could see on the sliver of her profile that was visible.

“We do not know that—”

“You’re just refusing to accept the obvious, Dmitri.” The vitriol in her voice was almost as effective as a slap. Alexander took a step back from her, for all that he wanted to do was fold her into his arms. “Stop _torturing_ yourself, and move the fuck on.”

“It is only these past few weeks that you have worsened,” Alexander said in a low, insistent voice. “I can find a solution. I _will_ find a solution.”

“Don’t go down that path again.” She turned back to him, and she had tears in her eyes, though they could just as easily have been from the violence of her vomiting as anything else. “God, Dmitri, don’t go down that path again. Not for me.”

“So, what? I am just supposed to watch you die again?” A hot prickle of tears gathered at the corners of Alexander’s eyes, and Rosemary pressed one of the napkins, miraculously still clean, on him.

“I’m only one iteration of a program that has died a hundred times over. I’m used to dying now.” When Alexander made no move to remove the tears now streaming down his cheeks, she stepped in close and took the napkin from him, taking care of the job herself. “I’m not Rosemary. I never have been,” she added in a small, quiet voice. “But I’m making sure you’ll have her for real. I promise.”

“You have always been her,” Alexander heard himself say in a small, broken voice, reaching for her face, cupping her cheek, leaning in to press a kiss to her forehead.

Rosemary let out a laugh with no humor to it. “Believe that, if it makes it easier. And let’s… let’s set this aside for now.” She stepped back and looked around, a fake little smile plastered to her mouth. “We’re someplace magical. Let’s make the most of it while I can, hm?”

Alexander murmured a quiet agreement.

But he refused to agree to anything else.

He would not watch her die again.


End file.
